It’s written by Paul Cornell, and I think his work is ambitious for the usual serial genre comic. I was lost a little bit … but I blamed that on the crossover stuff. My favorite part was the interaction of Faiza Hussain, Muslim doctor, and the Black Knight, who “stays flippant” so his sword won’t make him turn evil. (?)

Oh, and I liked the Skrull who looks like John Lennon, although it seems like a joke that got extended beyond what it could support. I hadn’t realized that Leonard Kirk was drawing it — his clean style makes him a long-time favorite of mine.

Anyway, in issue #1, there’s lots of big plot talking, and then Faiza gets zapped into skeleton. My interest immediately dropped to zero. She was the only hook into the story I had. I started having flashbacks to the comic that brought KC and I together, the Legionnaires Annual where they zapped Phase.

I put the comic down. I had a stack of #1-6, so just to give it one more chance, I opened #6. Oddly, Faiza was still being mentioned in the Story So Far section. That’s unusual, so I flipped through some pages, and hey! Faiza was back. I told KC about this, to which he responded, “Don’t you know by now that when someone dies in comics they always come back?” Well, yeah, but I didn’t have any incentive to keep looking into future issues once I thought the character I liked was gone. It was only because we already had them and I gave it one more chance that I’m bothering to go back and read the other issues.

By the way, the Secret Invasion banner on #1-4 is a disincentive. I’m going to muddle through anyway, but I shouldn’t have to work so hard to try a comic.

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9 Responses to “I Try Captain Britain and MI: 13”

Maybe I’ve been reading comics waaaay too long (Yes. Yes, I have), but as soon as I saw Faiza get zapped into a skeleton by a Skrull-ray, my IMMEDIATE thought was; “Oh. So she’ll “come back to life” and become super-powered now, huh? Oh. OK.”

I never thought for an instant that they’d kill her off (especially given the fact that she’s a Muslim woman. I don’t think Marvel wants THAT kind of press).

You know, I must be a jaded fan, because when she got zapped, I never gave it two thoughts. But I also knew that Cornell had done a lot of pre-debut interviews touting the character and it would have been quite the swerve to kill her off.

As for John the Skrull, that’s a different story, but I don’t want to ruin the remaining issues for you.

I didn’t find the Secret Invasion stuff confusing at all – it’s a bunch of alien Fascists invading Britain, it’s a stock thing. The only bit I found confusing was the bit with The Guy Speaking In Wisdom’s Head in #3 (it ties into the last Excalibur story), as Cornell briefly mentions what happened and then hurriedly moves on to do what he wants.

The main confusion comes from his writing style for comics, which moves _very fast_ while throwing stuff out at you breakneck and expects you to be smart enough to keep up. Which of course is better than moving slowly and unambitiously, I guess.

OSM, I didn’t see any pre-publicity for this series, but then, I no longer go to those kinds of sites for the most part.

The reason I wanted to talk about it was that it was unusual for me to approach a series as such a new reader. Usually I have heard something about a book ahead of time, and it was refreshing to approach it so freely. Although I think that the publishers have forgotten about that style, these days.